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The Bedsit Murderer: David Fuller · 10 Minute Murder | Bingeable True Crime Stories

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In nineteen eighty seven, two women were killed in the English town of Royal
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Turnbridge Wells, twenty year old Caroline Pierce and twenty five year old Wendy Nell,
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who were both sexually assaulted and strangled to death after an unidentified assailant broke
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into their homes. The attacks were seemingly random and investigators found themselves at a
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dead end. Eventually, the case seemed to go cold. As forensic technology
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becomes better, faster, and cheaper, this story becomes more and more common.
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DNA provides a link to cases that went cold decades ago, providing justice
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that the victims family had long since given up on. In the case of
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the Kent Bedsit murders, the DNA profile of the killer was officially created in
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two thousand seven, confirming what the detectives on the case had always believed.
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Whoever the killer was, the same man was responsible for both crimes. Law
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enforcement now had a DNA profile, but they were only able to compare it
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to the samples of DNA that they already had in their system. If the
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killer didn't have a recent criminal record, there was no way to find a
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match. Year by year, DNA technology became more and more useful, and
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finally, in twenty nineteen, the Bedsit murders case was reviewed and the DNA
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evidence collected from the crime scene was reanalyzed. Forensic experts used familial DNA technology
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to identify people who were possibly related to the killer, and people across the
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country were sent to visit all of these potential relatives, hoping that they would
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give consent to giving a DNA sample. One of the people whose door the
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police knocked on was a man named David Fuller. Interestingly, David did have
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a criminal record. As a young man in the early seventies, he carried
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out a string of burglaries where he entered houses by climbing through the windows.
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A sample of David's DNA was collected and, along with the rest of the
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samples, it was compared to the DNA profile of the Bedsit murderer. Unlike
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the rest of the DNA samples, David Fuller's was an exact match to the
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killer. This was the indisputable proof that the police needed to arrest David,
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and on the third of December, the perpetrator of the Bedsit murders was finally
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behind bars. But when investigators began to search David's home, they realized how
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he had spent the years since he committed the murders, and that he was
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even more sick and twisted than they thought. As soon as David was arrested,
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a highly trained search team was deployed to comb through his home. They
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were looking for any evidence that linked him to the Bedsit murders, as well
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as any sign that he had committed any further crimes. The more hidden the
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evidence was, the more the search team were interested in finding it. And
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by far the thing that David had gone to the most links to hide was
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the box of hard drives that had been carefully hidden in the back of the
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chest of drawers in his wardrobe. Shortly after the Bedsit murders, David had
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gotten a job working maintenance at the Kent and Sussex Hospital and worked there for
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more than twenty years. Afterward, he switched to another hospital, Pimbury,
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where he worked as a maintenance supervisor. These jobs gave him a swipe card
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that allowed him to access the hospital's highly secure areas, and in particular,
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it allowed him unsupervised, uncontrolled access to the mortuary. On those hidden hard
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drives, David kept an obsessive, meticulous record of the main crime he had
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spent his life committing, necrophilia. Most of David's victims had not been killed
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by him, like the bedsit murders. Instead, he had memorized the visual
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fields of the CCTV cameras in the hospital. He used the blind spots in
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the camera's footage to sneak into the mortuary after hours and sexually abused the corpses
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of girls and women. He had used his digital camera to film footage of
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himself abusing a disturbing amount of dead human bodies. A total of one hundred
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one victims were confirmed, although authorities suspected that David had committed necrophilia many more
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times than that. After he returned home from work. David would then carefully
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transfer the footage onto the hard drives, which he kept hidden in the back
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of his wardrobe. The earliest footage that investigators found was stated back to two
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thousand and five. The most recent offense had taken place less than a week
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before he was arrested. David had organized the necrophilia footage by researching the name
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and age of every victim, even searching social media to find the accounts of
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the corpses that he abused. David only abused female corpses, but apart from
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that, he didn't seem to have a particular victim profile. The oldest that
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he committed necrophilia with had died at the age of one hundred. The youngest
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corpse was a little girl who had only been nine years old when she passed
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away. When David abused the corpses, he showed no signs of remorse or
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respect for them or their grieving loved ones. He committed this act whenever he
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could, often molesting the corpses very soon after their passing or before their family
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arrived for a viewing. Police had thought that they had finally apprehended the perpetrator
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of the bedst murders, bringing justice to the families of Caroline Peerce and Wendy
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Nell. In reality, their investigation into the largest scale necrophilia case in the
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country's history was only just beginning. On each of the hard drives, there
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were more than five hundred videos as well as eight hundred thousand pictures, and
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that didn't include the other evidence that was later found on floppy disks, CDs,
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film negatives, and mobile phones. Nine dedicated investigators spent a grueling five
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months combing through the physical property they seized from David's home. It took six
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police officers more than a year to process the digital evidence file by file in
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an effort to figure out how many crimes David had committed and who the victims
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had been. While going through the footage, they realized that David had a
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habit of returning to the same corpse several times to commit more disgusting acts.
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In October twenty twenty one, David Fuller pleaded guilty to fifty one criminal offenses.
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At his trial, the daughter of one of David's victims spoke to him
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directly, telling him that when she was told about her mother's corpse being abused,
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the pain and emotional upset seared through her body like a knife. She
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addressed him by name, saying, David, I want you to know how
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much damage you have caused, how your sick and twisted behavior has damaged families
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like mine. I'm pleased that you're now being held accountable for what you did.
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Only seven hours after she died. David's necrophilia victims were not named in
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court, but the prosecution and families of the victims told the courtroom about the
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lives of the women that he had molested in death. They had been skiers,
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nurses, teachers, pilots, World War Two veterans, happily married wives,
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mothers and grandmothers. They had been daughters, sisters, and friends.
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In their last moments, many of them had wanted to continue living. At
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least three of the victims had been children who should have had their whole lives
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ahead of them. Instead, their lives had been cut short and their bodies
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had been defiled shortly after their deaths. At the time David committed these acts
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on some of the victims, they still had defibrillator pads attached or ivy lines
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inserted from where the hospital staff had tried and failed to save their lives.
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David was found guilty of both the bedsit murders and the necrophilia charges and sentenced
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to life in prison. A detective for the Kent Police commented on the verdict,
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saying that it would mean little to this abhorrent behavior who, throughout our
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investigation had demonstrated no remorse and only a capacity for self pity. There was
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no way to make David understand the gravity of what he had done. There
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was no way to rehabilitate a man who had committed at least two murders and
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then brazenly violated corpses for years without remorse. The only thing that the judge
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could do was ensured that David never harmed another person, living or dead.
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During David's sentencing, Missus Justice Chima Grubb told him, you are sixty eight
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years old. In nineteen seventy three and nineteen seventy six, you were convicted
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of dozens of burglaries committed by climbing into homes through windows. You spent the
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subsequent years living a lie, the facade of a mild and ordinary life.
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While in seclusion, you committed revolting and outrageous acts of the deepest darkness.
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You have a family who you deceived over all those years. It's almost impossible
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to believe that a single man can cause the misery to so many that you
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have done. But you did it, and in consequence, you are paying
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the price that human justice can be exact the rest of your mortal life in
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prison. That is ten minute Murder Forward today, brief and bingeible true crime.
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